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| Illustration from Silent Hill: The Novel |
Born in Saitama, Japan in 1972, Masahiro Ito graduated from the Graphic Design department of the Tama Art University. It was in 1997 when he joined Konami and became a member of the much adored Team Silent, where he first worked as a background and creature designer for the Silent Hill, and later on was also given the role as an art director for the next two installments.
Even after the team had split up once Silent Hill 4 had been released, Ito did a few more contributions to the Silent Hill series. Such as drawing the alternate covers of Dying Inside volume 3, the artwork for the comics Cage of Cradle and Double Under Dusk, and the japanese released covers for Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: Downpour.
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| Cover Designs for the Japanese release of Silent Hill: Downpour (Silent Hill 8) |
Cage of Cradle
Double Under Dusk
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| Pencil, Copics and Ink |
From Silent Hill 2 onwards, I found Ito's creature designs to be really different as compared to the ones I have seen in other horror games (Or even films), they weren't based on existing mythological creatures, but more on various human fears, they weren't exactly the most obvious of physical manifestations too, and while these creatures appear to be very humanoid in appearances, their designs were cleverly distorted and are in all, just plain disturbing to look at.
It is interesting to note that he does take most of his inspiration from abstract figurative painter, Francis Bacon, who is known his bold and emotionally raw imagery. It is very evident how much his works have inspired Ito's own.
To me nearly all of Ito's works are gorgeous enough to be displayed in an art museum somewhere for all to admire, his works were always a nicely balanced mixture of traditional and digital, they are just all so intensely detailed and and are colored with the the boldest of palettes, his designs are just… psychologically stirring.
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